Civil Rights Movement’s Work Is Unfinished, Holder Says

By Michelle Jamrisko -
Aug 24, 2013

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
said the civil rights movement is “work that remains
unfinished,” speaking at the commemoration of the 50th
anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

“The struggle must and will go on,” said Holder, the
country’s first black attorney general, on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial. Holder noted that today’s events also come 150
years after President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation freeing slaves during the Civil War.

Holder’s remarks came amid three hours of speeches,
including from King’s son, Martin Luther King, III; Rajmohan
Gandhi, grandson of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi;
Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of civil rights activist Medgar
Evers who was murdered the same year as the march; House
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California and civil rights
leader Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the NAACP.

Representative John Lewis, who helped organize King’s march
half a century ago as a 23-year-old, urged the crowd on
Washington’s National Mall to “speak up, speak out” and
continue the fight for civil rights. “Make some noise,” the
Georgia Democrat said.

“Fifty years ago I stood right here in this spot,” Lewis
said. “Now we have another fight,” he said, referring to the
Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on June 25 on the 1965 Voting Rights
Act that invalidated the formula for determining which states
need federal approval before changing election rules.

Jobs Needed

The Reverend Al Sharpton, one of the organizers of the
rally, urged lawmakers to repair the Voting Rights Act.

Also present for the anniversary events were the families
of Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till, young blacks whose killings
57 years apart galvanized civil rights communities.

Following the speeches, attendees carrying signs with
slogans including “Dr. King’s Legacy: Jobs Not War” and
“Justice for Trayvon” marched from the Lincoln Memorial down
Independence Avenue, past the King Memorial on the edge of the
Tidal Basin, before reaching the Washington Monument.

Events commemorating the 1963 March will culminate in a
speech Aug. 28, the day of King’s speech, by President Barack Obama. The first black U.S. president has tried to balance his
brand of post-racial politics with his personal experiences of
growing up black in America and calls from the African-American
community to focus more on racial inequality.

Part-Time Work

Unemployment among African-Americans is at 13.4 percent,
while the national unemployment rate is 7.4 percent.

The state of the labor market is a primary reason that Rosa
Vaughan came from Centreville, Virginia, to the march. Vaughan,
who was 10 years old at the time of King’s speech at the Lincoln
Memorial, has been working part-time at a grocery store since
her job at USA Today was eliminated and is seeking a full-time
position.

“I have to work this evening but I wanted to be here,”
said Vaughan, who said she was particularly “uplifted” by the
diversity of nationalities present on the Mall. “This does my
heart good.”

“We still have amazingly high unemployment, we have
incredible economic inequality,” said Lynne Turner, 50, from
New Jersey, reflecting on the present compared with 50 years
ago.

Insults Endure

William Donovan, 26, said he wanted to be a part of the
day’s events because he remembers hearing about family members’
experiences during the civil rights movement.

“I’ve been called the n-word before,” said Donovan,
recalling an incident when a truck driver shouted the epithet at
him and a friend. “There’s nothing you can say that has the
same impact.”

Donovan is the only one of three siblings who graduated
from college, and is pursuing his master’s in business
administration at Howard University in Washington. He said he
tries to show his nephew and three nieces that they can emulate
his success.

“Even with a black president, they still think this is so
far away,” Donovan, originally from Syracuse, N.Y., said.

Today’s march is also meant to incorporate other minority
groups and advocate for policy changes, Wade Henderson,
president and chief executive officer of the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said on a conference call
earlier this week.

The groups are calling for immigration policy changes,
restoration of voting rights and job creation, and to recognize
the disabled and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
communities that weren’t invited to participate in King’s 1963
events, Henderson said.